The Paradox of Educational Power

Inevitably and predictably, America's news media have given us
another round of back-to-school stories and documentaries, many of
which again question why Johnny cannot read or why his teacher cannot
be more effective.

Just as predictably, virtually none of these analyses has gotten it
right. They focus on what are alleged to be tight budgets, low teacher
salaries, political conflicts, religious pressure groups, or some other
secondary condition. What they miss is the fundamental condition that
immobilizes education improvement in the United States.

Almost every education reform proposal
since the issuance of A Nation at Risk in 1983 has concentrated
on fixing the education system. New laws will be invented, or
reinvented, intended to make education personnel direct their attention
to yet another activity such as AIDS prevention, school-to-work
training, more or fewer teacher education courses, and the addition or
elimination of some sacred library book. What well-intentioned
reformers almost always overlook is that authority for instruction
should reside with schools, not conglomerates of schools called
education systems. The means for holding education accountable is to
specify desired goals and then hold individual schools, not entire
school systems, responsible for obtaining these ends. America has lost
its way in education because America has disenfranchised individual
local schools.

Almost a century ago, policymakers responded to the pleadings of
efficiency experts and political reformers and began to centralize
authority in larger and larger school systems and in state
bureaucracies. One-room and one-school districts were consolidated into
ever larger operating units, ever more dependent upon central-office
managers and state, then later federal, bureaucrats. Anticipated
economies of scale seldom materialized. For example, even today school
supplies can almost always be purchased as cheaply at the corner
stationer as from the district's central warehouse. But the authority
of individual schools and the crucial link between schools and their
immediate clients--students, parents, and neighborhoods--was lost in
the push for added economic efficiency and in a desire to insulate
schools from the evils of big-city ward bosses. In fact, we only traded
one kind of politics for another. In place of localized selfish
interests, we substituted centralized special interests. Instructional
effectiveness and performance accountability were impeded yet more.

The paradoxical situation surrounding performance accountability
illustrates the dysfunctional disempowerment of our schools.
Illogically, the most accountable individuals in public education, the
ones who most easily and quickly can be replaced if the system's
performance is judged wanting, are school superintendents and school
board members. The former turn over with appalling regularity. The
standard length of service for district superintendents is estimated by
the American Association of School Administrators to be less than three
years. School board members can also be removed from office easily,
either by recall or at the next regular election. Neither of these
positions is afforded tenure or any other form of employment
security.

The paradox is that these education officials who are most visible
and vulnerable are the ones that are the least positioned to influence
instruction. It is school principals and teachers who are in closest
proximity to students, and they are the ones best situated to operate
the levers of instruction. These are the officials who can initiate
teaching and adapt curriculum materials and instruction to the needs of
individual students. But as most readers will recognize, principals and
teachers are the individuals most protected by statute, judicial
rulings, and collective bargaining contracts. They are simultaneously
the most important, the most protected, the least accountable, and
least empowered.

America has lost its way in education because America has
disenfranchised individual local schools.

While principals and teachers are best positioned to make instruction
effective, on many important dimensions they have the least power. For
almost 100 years, our policy systems have eviscerated the
decisionmaking discretion of those professionals working at schools.
Instead, state laws, federal regulations, and court decisions
increasingly have padded the decisionmaking power of school districts,
superintendents, school board members, and state and federal
bureaucrats. Of course, these are not the people who instruct our
students. When critics rail against lackluster education performance,
the point on which they should concentrate is this disjuncture between
power and position. Principals and teachers justifiably can, and
regularly do, shield themselves from criticism by pointing out that
they don't make education rules, they only follow them.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most of our public
school children attend our least effective, and most bureaucratized,
school systems. Twenty-five percent of all public school enrollees
attend school in only 1 percent of the nation's public school
districts. These are overly large, bumbling bureaucracies lodged in our
biggest cities. Fifty percent of America's public school pupils attend
school in 5 percent of our districts. The converse is important.
Ninety-five percent of our districts are relatively small. These
systems, while by no means perfect, come closer to empowering
principals and teachers.

For America's schools to be as effective as the 21st century will
surely demand, we must realign power with position. We must re-empower
individual schools with the authority to employ and evaluate teachers,
deploy resources, and determine the means of instruction. Federal and
state policy must come to recognize the school, not the education
system, as the vital production unit. Thereafter, we need only two
fundamental changes. We must authorize teachers and principals and then
hold them accountable for the results. No other education reform, no
matter how well intended, well funded, or well publicized, will prove
as well founded.

James W. Guthrie is a professor of education and public policy and the
director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tenn.

Vol. 17, Issue 07, Page 34

Published in Print: October 15, 1997, as The Paradox of Educational Power

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